Initiating a Wild Hunt
by DragonyPhoenix
Summary: What happens to Ethan after Giles gives him to the Initiative?


Ethan opened his eyes and quickly shut them again, wincing at the blindingly bright lights. Where, he started to wonder. Oh yes, Rupert gave me to the soldier boys, all wrapped up with ribbons and a pretty pink bow. After blinking his eyes open, he found he was able to see. Perhaps the lights weren't so bright after all; perhaps he'd been out a long time. He took stock of his surroundings, which were minimal enough: lights above but behind a of barrier, white walls, and one cot with a depressingly scratchy blanket.

They'd left him in his own clothes. These lads really do have a lot to learn about humiliation, he thought. Although I supposed they'd call it something tedious, like breaking the enemy's will. Would enemy even be the correct term? What would they call a not unattractive, human warlock? Nothing I'd want to hear, I'm sure although I'll probably find out soon enough if I don't manage an escape.

"Speaking of escape," he said to himself. He threw an energy ball against the door. It was a simple enough spell, one he'd learned decades ago. It didn't work. Or, to be more precise, it did work. There was nothing wrong with the spell. Something had blocked it.

"Luminos," he said, trying for one of the easiest spells he knew, one even a beginner could do. He paid close attention but this spell worked. With a wave of his hand, he dismissed the balls of light. The next spell he tried should have unlocked the door but, instead, dissipated just before it hit the lock.

A nullifying barrier, he thought. Clever lads, aren't you? Too clever by half. Who taught you that, I wonder.

With nothing else to do, he slipped into a trance, which wasn't disturbed until food was slipped through a slot at the bottom of the door. The silver tray looked disturbingly medical, even as it reflected the white walls. He stared at the cover, also white, before shouting out, "Would it have killed you to provide the tiniest bit of color?"

He wasn't sure he should trust the food.

No, that wasn't true. He was absolutely certain he shouldn't trust the food. He tried to slide it out of the room but the slot wouldn't open from his side so he sat back onto the cot and slipped into a trance again. In less than a minute, gas, dark gray against the pristine walls, started pouring out of the ceiling. "When I said a bit of color, this wasn't quite what I had in mind," he shouted. If you had to go down, might as well go down with style.

It didn't knock him out, as he'd expected, but he found he didn't care enough to do much of anything. When the two men in white coats entered, he was furious but his rage was so far away that he could barely even touch it, much less take it out on those two imbeciles. He followed their directions: helping them remove his clothes; sitting still for the hospital gown that they put on backwards, leaving the open space at the front; and lying down on the cart and patiently waiting while they strapped him in.

They left him there, cold against the metal cart, for a long time, long enough for the drug to wear off. When they came back, he begged and offered them anything they could ever want, most of which he wouldn't have been able to provide even if he had been free.

They ignored him, talking about some game, football possibly. Not fair. He couldn't even keep up a conversation about British sports. What did he know about teams selling players to each other? He tried though. Anything to make a connection with these men who might have the power to free him. The shorter one, an Hispanic, glanced over when Ethan made a joke about OJ – the only American athlete he could name at that moment. Ethan tried to smile but, after that quick glance, neither man looked at him again.

When he saw where they were taking him, he struggled, ineffectively, against the bonds. Not an operating room, he thought. "Please," he shouted after the men as they left him there alone. "I have connections. I can get you," he trailed off as the door shut behind them.

It all served to bring back his worst nightmares from childhood: the light overhead that could be moved to wherever the doctor needed to see; the cold, indifferent walls; the medical equipment off to one side; even the chill of the room. He was screaming when the nurse walked in. She cursed and, holding the door open, called out into the hallway. The two attendants came back. "Why didn't you set him up properly when you brought him in?"

"Didn't want to touch that creep," the taller attendant, the Nordic one, replied.

"Little Nazi youth," Ethan couldn't resist saying. "Low on your gypsy quota this month?"

"Well, touch him now," the nurse said as if Ethan hadn't spoken although the attendant looked furious. "Get his feet up so we'll be ready when the doctor gets here." The attendants started moving at that and, quicker than Ethan could blink, his feet were hooked above him and his hospital gown had been opened, exposing his body from his anus to his neck.

"Please, couldn't I have a bit of decency here? Just close the gown." He thought if he got them to help him, he might get more out of them. They didn't even seem to hear him.

When the doctor came in, the nurse was setting, things, Ethan couldn't see what, onto a tray. "Aren't you ready yet?" he asked dismissively.

"Almost, doctor."

Ethan knew doctors from when he was a kid. They never listened and, if you tried to argue, they just hurt you all the more. Best to lie still, get this part over with, and figure out what he could work later.

"First probe," the doctor said.

Ethan screamed as something was jabbed into the sensitive skin between his cock and anus. He tried to move, to stop the next attack, but was bound too tightly.

"Shut him up," the doctor yelled. "How am I supposed to concentrate well enough to initiate probes in this racket?"

"Sorry, doctor," the nurse replied, grabbing a gag from a drawer. Ethan tried to shut his mouth but the pain was too great. She shoved the gag in with a brutal efficiency. As saliva built up in his mouth at the taste of disinfectant, Ethan hoped it would choke him and end his nightmare.

His gagged screams continued, apparently muted enough that they didn't the doctor, as a second probe was inserted just inches above the first and then a third into his stomach. He thought it couldn't get any worse. He was wrong. The nurse flipped a switch and Ethan felt his magic draining out of him, through the probes. It felt like his life draining away. He desperately tried to hold onto his magic, using every trick he knew, but nothing worked against the efficient machinery.

He could barely move by the time they wheeled him back into his room. He offered neither resistance nor help as they changed him back into his own clothes and left him on the cot. Unable to sleep, he lay there, panting to help ease the pain. Really, he'd been told it was supposed to help women in labor; you'd think it would be more effective.

When he was able to move again, even if just a little bit, he saw pills and a glass of water on a stand by his cot. For pain, he assumed. How solicitous of my dear doctors, he thought. He couldn't risk it though. Perhaps they were curious if he would drug himself instead of waiting for the gas this time. He had no way of knowing but no reason to trust that anything in the room would help him.

Besides, there were other ways to deal with pain. While his magic was currently depleted, he did have enough for one small spell. With trembling arms, he pushed himself up until he leaned against the wall. One deep breath sent him into a light trance. He started chanting in a language last spoken, as a living language, long before the Romans had come to Briton. As the power of the spell took him over, he jerked straight up, opening his two lower wounds. The pain drained out of him with his blood.

After chanting the spell the requisite nine times, he opened his eyes, clear headed enough to think again. If he was going to escape, he'd need outside help that could get past the barrier; someone, or something, more destructive than a healing spell, which brought up another consideration. If he did what he was considering, he'd be responsible for the deaths of dozens, if not hundreds of men. Oh, not directly. He wasn't about to murder them with his bare hands but, while he'd certainly caused deaths in the past, he'd never been there to see... He'd always made sure he was elsewhere.

This time, he wouldn't be able to avoid seeing their, no, the bodies. If he went through with it.

But what else could he do? Rupert might not even know where the solider boys had taken him but, even if he did, Rupert had given him to them. Nobody was going to rescue him. He could either allow the doctors to drain his life away or...

He hardened his heart to help himself think of them as less than human, well, as less than himself at least. While it was a threshold he'd never let himself cross before, it wasn't that large a step for Ethan to take.

"Those scientists," he spit out the word with a snarling disdain. "Think they can cage me. They believe I'm bound here. Powerless. They don't have the slightest idea of what I can do." When he thought of the doctor, it was a projection of all the doctors that had ever ignored and hurt him. "What the dear doctor doesn't know will definitely harm him."

He started chanting, calling on beings who might not be gods, who might even be demons for all he knew, but who were powerful enough, in their own right, to free him. "Herne, horned one. Hunter 'neath the northern sun. The call, the horn, the dogs go out. Wild hunt begins." The chant took him over, sinking him down into a trance much deeper than the one the simple healing spell had required. He touched bottom and came to a place where the Old Ones would answer him.

Ethan's eyes burned black. His voice lost its refined edge and become coarse and guttural, hardly sounding human at all as the chant lost its melodic tone. The full four phrases were replaced by one, echoing like a death knell throughout his cell. "Wild Hunt begins. Wild Hunt begins. Wild Hunt begins."

He passed out to the sounds of screaming. His nightmares were wild. The imagery fantastic and deadly, as if Bosch and Goya had raised a stepchild together, a demon child, who'd taken control of his dreams: fairies mounted mice, fanged like vampires; elf shot downing men, who could only scream with their eyes as their paralyzed bodies were skinned alive; creatures as pale as death whose very footsteps left plague and war in their wake.

In the middle of such phantasms, he drifted halfway back to consciousness when something large snuffled at him. His weakness, caused by lack of food and having his life's magic drained out of him, sent him spiraling back into the depths of crazed dreams. It saved his life.

When Ethan woke, the door to his cell was torn off its hinges. Huge paw prints led up to his body, circled around, and marked up the walls as if something had been drawn to him but had passed over, bouncing off the walls and into the corridor again. Ethan paled at the thought. He'd been desperate enough to call up the Wild Hunt but hadn't realized that he, as the Caller, might become one of the hunted.

He stood up carefully but the time he'd spent asleep, even if locked in nightmares, had revived him somewhat, enough that he could stand and walk without much trouble. He looked out the doorway, uncertain how he could get out of the building. A quick exit seemed prudent. Then he saw the arrows, glowing slightly, painted phosphorescence on the walls but down near the floor.

He thought for a moment before deciding and walked against them, towards the large open area he'd been carted through on his way to the operating room. Bodies were strewn everywhere. The quick glance he got, before turning his head, showed him that, whether the men fled or fought, the results were the same. Steeling himself, he looked again. The corpses looked untouched although it seemed that they had all died screaming. He didn't see the doctor but the two attendants had been pushing another victim to the operating room: a woman, young and moon faced, with hair his mother would have called ash blonde.

"Damn," he said. He hadn't thought that he might be killing other victims of the Initiative. He hadn't thought at all. "My dear, I do apologize," he said to the girl as he closed her eyes. It didn't help. She looked just as terrified with her eyes shut as she had when they'd been open.

Turning quickly away, his eyes scanned the corpses until he saw what he was looking for, three gold stars. Unclipping the badge from the uniform, he said, "Thanks, general. This ought to come in handy when I exit, stage left."

Looking up, he thought it might be useful more quickly than he'd expected. He could feel magic, raw and wounded, pulsing across the way, in a room next to the operating room. After he'd used the badge to get in, he found two cannisters, taller by half than he was, humming with magic. He held a hand out towards them, coveting the power. Unfortunately he didn't know how to get at it and had no time to figure it out. He had no idea how long he'd been unconscious but certainly somebody would come to investigate, probably sooner rather than later.

When he stepped out of the room, he found more of the phosphorescent arrows, which he followed to the nearest exit. He used the badge twice, to get himself through checkpoints, and then tossed it aside as soon as, pushing through one final door, the star lit sky filled his vision.

He emerged from the clean, white corridors into the night's cool darkness.


End file.
